Shelby County Schools plan ‘proactive response’ in regard to national school walkout

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As students across the country planned to take part in a national schools walkout, Shelby County Schools planned to take a proactive response, said public relations supervisor Cindy Warner.

The walkout, set for one month after the Feb. 14 shooting which left 17 dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, originated with EMPOWER, the youth branch of the Women's March. Taking place at 10 a.m. local time on March 14, the walkout was aimed at raising awareness regarding gun violence, according to EMPOWER's website.

“We plan to work with our students to find ways for them to express themselves in ways that are constructive,” Warner said in an email to 280 Living. “We do not have plans to punish students, but rather are working with them on ways to peacefully express themselves as it relates to these recent tragic events and the real concerns they have.”

At Chelsea High School, students approached Principal Wayne Trucks about organizing an event in coordination with the #Enough campaign.

“For the last two or three weeks, we’ve been working together to try to arrange something purposeful, so instead of creating a distraction or a disruption we wanted to create a conversation,” Trucks said.

Starting at 10 a.m., Chelsea High School students were able to go to the auditorium or remain in their classes. About 150 students showed up, Trucks said, and six students spoke during the program. Their main focus was around school safety, Trucks said, as well as awareness around gun violence and how “schools should be a safe place, and it starts with students and student voices.”

At the end of the discussion, there was a moment of silence, and the names of the 17 victims from Stoneman Douglas were read, as was the name of Courtlin Arrington, a Huffman High School student who was shot and killed on March 7.

“It was another reminder that it was a great day to be a Hornet,” Trucks said. “The kids did great. I was very proud of them — the speakers and the audience. They had questions at the end, of me and for me, … so it was a real positive experience.”

The fact that students approached him, he said, showed a level of trust between the teachers, administration and students.

“It was a situation where I was very proud of the students for reaching out because I knew that they wanted to do it the right way by working with the school to do something more meaningful than a protest,” Trucks said. “They didn’t have to include me at all, but they believed it would be better to create a more positive environment instead of, ‘Hey everybody let’s walk out of class at 10 o’clock on Wednesday.'”

The conversations around school safety, Trucks added, are ones he expects to continue as part of an ongoing dialogue about students’ concerns.

At Oak Mountain High School, Principal Kristi Sayers issued a statement to parents on March 13, notifying them of a potential walk out. It noted that students would not be punished if they participated in the walk out, and that class instruction would continue.

“I feel student participation in any events should be a decision between students and parents and discussed at home,” the statement said.

Kate Agliata, a parent of an Oak Mountain Intermediate and an Oak Mountain Middle student, chose to check her students out of school to go to Oak Mountain High School. She was standing out front at 10 a.m.

“We checked our children out of school so that we could have them participate in an event like this no matter if we were by ourselves or if we were with others,” Agliata said. “But we thought if we could be somewhere locally where there might be a greater presence, then we wanted to be there.”

While there were no students outside of the school for a walk out, Agliata said her understanding was that students were able to leave classrooms and hold the walk out into the hallways. She added that when she and another parent stood outside one of the school’s common areas, an administrator approached them.

“[We] eventually had an administrator walk out to tell us we could not be on the school campus as protesters, despite our being peaceful and simply standing on the outskirts of the school, near the parking lot,” Agliata said.

The administrator added that students were not allowed to step outside for safety reasons, according to Agliata, and he believed the school as a whole was having a good experience.

Overall, Agliata said that she was disappointed that the school district didn’t do more to allow students to engage in the social issues at the center of the walk out.

“I want change, and I'm going to work very hard to see that it happens,” she said. “The great experience I had today is one that I also hope my own son will take with him along his life journey — I hope he'll remember that his voice is just as important as anyone else's, and no matter his age, it too needs to be heard.”

As a school system, Shelby County Schools’ middle and high school coordinators sent out emails to administrators, which included suggestions for creating a positive dialogue, Warner said.

Some of the suggestions included:

Consider having safety committees meet and share any teacher concerns they hear around the school. Ask them to share any procedures, facility areas in need of attention or ideas. Make sure your faculty and staff feel like part of the solution.

Seek to partner in proactive ways with students who wish to explore this issue and express opinions in appropriate ways.

Consider giving students a forum for discussing this and other very real issues (this might even become a regular fixture in your school's culture).

Seize this teachable moment to educate students about proper ways to advocate for legislative action and how that process works in the real world.

Talk to students and parents about your school's safety plan and the huge commitment already in place from our system to ensure student safety.

If students want some sort of event, try to guide that to a weekend or after school hours.

If something during the school day seems inevitable, do everything possible to avoid a confrontational, adversarial dynamic. Work with students with three things in mind: student safety, integrity of the school day and the gravity of this issue.

Comments (3)

Walkout

Why would you bring students from OTHER schools to this walkout? It it not a public event and should only be for the OMHS students. If the community wants to put together a public event to protest gun violence, then they are absolutely free to do so. Having random people show up on the school campus uninvited is not a good idea.

Betsy4 days ago

The point of the walkout

The point of a walkout is to show the community how the students feel about the deaths and the lack of protection. Can that be done from a hallway? Can that be done from an auditorium? Sorry, saying it was a safety issue does not work. How do the students arrive and leave school if not via the outdoors. Personally I have no respect for the administration and will be voicing it in my free speech sigm on March 24Lsting the names of the adults that supported gun deaths with their refusal to allow the right to protest.

Martine4 days ago

The point of the walkout

I'm sorry, but I don't think it's fair to accuse school personnel of supporting gun deaths by not allowing protests that meet your definition of such. It isn't their fault that students lives were cut short. It's totally the fault of the killer.